A Question of Taste
by Rule23
Summary: Narcissa is faced with a choice. Dark or Light?


**Disclaimer**_**: **_Anything you recognise belongs to the incomparable J. K. Rowling.

No money is being made from this.

**Written for the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition – Season**

**Seven – Quarter Finals**

**Beater 2 for the Tutshill Tornados**

**Quarter Finals: In It Together**

**BEATER 2**: Use the Beater 1 prompt for their least favourite round this

season

Lovely's least favourite prompt was from Round Six: **War. Write a fic set during a wizarding war**

**(either one we know about or one of your own creation).**

**Additional Prompts:**

[character] Narcissa Malfoy

[location] Honeydukes

[object] Postcard

**Thanks to the Tutshill Tornados for betaing!**

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A Question of Taste

Words: 1302

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_To my dearest Cissy,_

_I'm sorry I left without saying goodbye. There wasn't time. I know you will blame me for choosing sides—choosing _their_ side—but I had no choice. They are persecuting the man I love. You have been asked to choose as well; marrying Lucius Malfoy will align you forever. There will be no turning back. If you can bear it, I beg you to choose compassion. When the Dark Lord talks of Muggles, always remember that he is talking about _people_. People with homes, lives, and loved ones. People like you and me. If you decide to do the right thing—to turn your back on the Malfoys, on the Blacks—you will always be welcome in my home._

_I love you, and I'm so sorry I had to leave you._

_Meda_

The postcard flew out of Narcissa's pocket as she rummaged for her coin purse.

"_Accio!"_

It flew back into her hand before the breeze could snatch it away. The front showed a stark black and white photograph of the cliffs of Whitby, the Abbey cutting its way into the sky. The waves didn't crash against the shore, and the trees didn't sway in the breeze. The stillness of Muggle photographs gave her the creeps. Her sister's sloppy cursive filled the back of the postcard, some of the words running together and the ink smudged with tears. She no longer needed to be able to read it to know what it said. She'd memorised the words. Inscribed them on her heart.

She tucked the postcard away and counted out the money she had left. Hogsmeade weekends were always hard on her coin purse—her manicure alone seemed to have doubled in price since she was a third-year—but she had just enough left for a trip to Honeydukes. She looked left and right but couldn't see anyone she knew. It was safe to sneak inside.

It was remarkable how many people objected to something as innocuous as a visit to a sweet shop. _You'll never catch a husband if you keep piling the weight on with biscuits and sweets_, her mother would say. But Narcissa liked biscuits and sweets. And, surely, if someone loved her—like Lucius said he did—they wouldn't mind if she got to be a little thicker around the hips. Would they?

Bellatrix would consider a trip to Honeydukes as a waste of resources. _Save your galleons to help the Dark Lord, Cissy._ And Lucius would write it off as childish. _You already look like a child; don't act like it as well. _She tried to hide her scant chest and narrow hips beneath loose, flowing robes but it never seemed to do the trick, and when she'd tried to buy a drink for herself on her seventeenth birthday—she'd always wanted to try Madame Hornby's Honey Meade—the barman wouldn't serve her unless she submitted to testing under an Age Charm. He'd apologised profusely when he'd realised his mistake and his scathing stare had become a leer.

Andromeda wouldn't have judged. _Save some sweets for me, _she'd have said and followed Narcissa into the shop.

The door creaked with its familiar groan as she pushed it open, setting the bells chiming. She closed her eyes and let the smells and sounds of the warm place engulf her. The spice of the gingerbread men they sold every year around Christmastime—_Catch them if you can!_—tickled her nose. Ice Mice squeaked from inside their cages. The fruity tang of gummies, the buttery richness of freshly-folded fudge, and the bitter chocolate of Honeydukes's Finest all warred for her attention.

The door opened behind her, and she was pushed forward into the shop. She turned to glare at the newcomer—a boy she recognised from the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.

"Sorry, Narcissa," he said with a blush before he moved around her to join a group of friends decked out in bronze and blue.

Narcissa ignored the rowdy students that filled the shop and went straight to the display marked _Newest Arrivals_. It was something of a tradition. There was a wooden case full of bright red lollies standing to attention like soldiers: _Blood Pops_, the information card read, _perfect for the more discerning vampire. Available in A, B, AB, and O!_ Narcissa picked one of them up out of sheer curiosity and read the label: _Warning – contains human blood. _She put it back quickly.

They had sweets that would make people hum annoying songs for hours, unrealistic quills spun from sugar, ginger biscuits that would never go soft, gobstoppers that grew rather than shrank, and curious blue bonbons that promised to let you float five inches from the ground as you sucked. She wasn't really interested in any of them.

She left the _Newest Arrivals_ and went to the chocolate counter.

"Can I help you, dearie?" the kind old woman behind the counter asked. She looked like she belonged in an Alpine village and always had a warm smile brightening her face. Narcissa thought that if she had to spend her life working in a sweet shop, she wouldn't have anything to smile about. "Perhaps you'd like to try our newest milk chocolate?"

"Oh, no thank you." Her lip curled in distaste. "I don't really like milk chocolate."

She never had; milk chocolate had always seemed so ordinary, so boring. She gravitated towards the creamiest of white chocolates or the bitterest of dark chocolates. And she could never pick which it was she wanted. It would be so much easier if she liked milk chocolate—if she could choose something in between. She wished the extremes weren't necessary.

"Well, we have a new white chocolate in." She gestured towards a neat pyramid of creamy blocks. "It's mixed with lemon essence and candied lemon peel. We invented the recipe after a request from Professor Dumbledore. It's called The Albus."

"Oh, that sounds interesting. Could I try a bit?" Sampling chocolate was another of her Honeydukes traditions.

"Of course, dearie!"

The woman scraped a curl of chocolate from a large block and gave it to Narcissa to try. It melted against her tongue almost immediately, the creaminess of the chocolate punctuated with bright bursts of citrus, like bubbles popping as you sank into a warm bath.

"It's delicious. Do you have any new flavours of dark chocolate?"

"I thought you'd never ask. This one is particularly special." The old woman shaved a dark flake—barely the size of Narcissa's manicured thumbnail—from a small block and handed it to her to try. "It's one hundred and eleven percent cocoa solids that's been made with chillies. It's called Fiendfyre—it's sure to set your tongue alight!"

And set Narcissa's tongue alight it did. The chillies burnt and the chocolate soothed. It was exciting, raw, unlike anything she'd ever tasted.

"So, which is it, dearie? Dark or light?"

She barely had to think.

"I'll take the dark."

"Perfect!"

Narcissa handed over her sickles and was given a small but beautifully wrapped package in return. As she tucked it into her cloak pocket, her fingers brushed the edges of her sister's postcard.

It was easy with chocolate. She could visit a sweet shop and ask to try a little of each. She could find the one that matched her tastes. There weren't any consequences for taking the dark chocolate. But life wasn't that simple; the war wasn't that simple. She couldn't switch sides if she found it too bitter, too dark. By picking one group, she was forever cutting herself off from the other.

_I love you, and I'm so sorry I had to leave you. _

She couldn't pick. Not yet. But she knew that someday—someday soon—she would have to choose.

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The End


End file.
